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THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO
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AuTHorsHiP. The importance of ascertaining the authorship of the Fourth Gospel can hardly be exaggerated. In no other Gospel have we the direct testimony of an eye-witness. Luke expressly informs us that his information, although carefully sifted, is at second hand. If in Mark we have the reminiscences of the Apostle Peter, these are related not by himself but by his companion and interpreter John Mark. In the first Gospel we probably have in a more or less original form the collection of our Lord’s sayings which Papias tells us was made by Matthew; but certainly the original work of Matthew did not exactly coincide with our present Gospel, and to what extent alteration has been made upon it, it is not easy to say. But the Fourth Gospel professes to be the work of an eye-witness, and of an eye-witness who enjoyed an intimacy with our Lord allowed to none besides. If this claim be true, and if the Gospel be indeed the work of the Apostle John, then we have not only the narrative of one who saw and was a part of what he records, but we have a picture of our Lord by one who knew Him better than any one else did.
On examination the contents of this Gospel are found to be of such a character as to make it imperative that we should know whether we can trust its statements or not. The author of the Gospel not only expresses his own belief in our Lord’s divinity, but he puts words into the mouth of Jesus which even on close scrutiny seem to many to form an explicit claim to pre-existence and thus to imply a claim to divinity. If these claims and statements merely reflect the belief and opinion of the third or fourth generation and not the very mind of Christ Himself, then they are important mainly as historical evidence of a growing tradition and not as giving us the firm basis on which the Church may build. But if an apostle was responsible for the Gospel, then the probability is that the utterances which are referred to Christ nearly, if not absolutely, represent His very words, and that the doctrinal position of the author himself is not one we can lightly set aside. For, although apostolic author-